Why Being Mindful May Have More Benefits Than You Realize: Mindfulness Improves Both Explicit and Implicit Mood

Abstract

Prior research has consistently observed that mindfulness facilitates emotion regulation. However, this research mainly examined explicit, self-reported emotion. Does mindfulness also facilitate regulation of implicit emotional responses? To address this question, the authors induced sadness among a group of healthy volunteers (N = 72), after which participants performed a mindfulness, distraction, or rumination exercise. Implicit mood changes were assessed with the Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test and explicit mood changes were assessed with the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule. Participants’ implicit and explicit negative mood improved in the mindfulness and distraction groups, but not in the rumination group. The mindfulness group displayed greater congruence between implicit and explicit mood than the other groups. Trait mindfulness was associated with lower implicit—but not explicit—negative mood across the whole sample both before and after the strategy induction but did not moderate the effects of the strategy induction on mood improvement. These findings indicate that mindfulness can facilitate emotion regulation on both implicit and explicit levels.

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ORIGINAL PAPER
Why Being Mindful May Have More Benefits Than You Realize:
Mindfulness Improves Both Explicit and Implicit
Mood Regulation
Carina Remmers
1,2
&Sascha Topolinski
3
&Sander L. Koole
4
Published online: 5 April 2016
#Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
Abstract Prior research has consistently observed that mind-
fulness facilitates emotion regulation. However, this research
mainly examined explicit, self-reported emotion. Does mind-
fulness also facilitate regulation of implicit emotional re-
sponses? To address this question, the authors induced sad-
ness among a group of healthy volunteers (N=72), after
which participants performed a mindfulness, distraction, or
rumination exercise. Implicit mood changes were assessed
with the Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test and explic-
it mood changes were assessed with the Positive and Negative
Affect Schedule. Participants’implicit and explicit negative
mood improvedin the mindfulness and distraction groups, but
not in the rumination group. The mindfulness group displayed
greater congruence between implicit and explicit mood than
the other groups. Trait mindfulness was associated with lower
implicit—but not explicit—negative mood across the whole
sample both before and after the strategy induction but did not
moderate the effects of the strategy induction on mood im-
provement. These findings indicate that mindfulness can fa-
cilitate emotion regulation on both implicit and explicit levels.
Keywords Mindfulness .Emotion regulation .Implicit
mood .Rumination
Introduction
When people are mindful, they are focusing on their present
feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations in a open, accepting,
and non-judgmental manner (Segal et al. 2002). Over the past
decades, many studies have observed positive associations
between mindfulness and life satisfaction (Brown and Ryan
2003). Moreover, mindfulness-based interventions have been
used to treat a wide array of psychological as well as physical
problems (Keng et al. 2011). It is therefore important to learn
more about the psychological mechanisms that can explain the
effects of mindfulness.
One key mechanism by which mindfulness has its benefi-
cial effects is by promoting effective emotion regulation
(Hoelzel et al. 2011;Roemeretal.2015). When people are
in a mindful state, they are sensitive to emotional cues in their
experiential field (Teper et al. 2013). Moreover, mindfulness
encourages people to non-judgmentally view their emotions
as transient mental events rather than reflections of reality
(Segal et al. 2002). This accepting attitude may thus keep
people from using dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies
such as experiential avoidance (Hayes et al. 1996) and rumi-
nation (Nolen-Hoeksema et al. 2008). In short, mindfulness
may allow people to deal with their emotions in a more adap-
tive manner (Roemer et al. 2015).
In line with the foregoing, trait mindfulness is consistently
correlated with adaptive emotion regulation (e.g., Coffey et al.
2010; Desrosiers et al. 2013; Hill and Updegraff 2012).
Moreover, experimental studies using brief mindfulness in-
ductions in meditation naïve participants have supported the
idea that mindfulness fosters adaptive emotion regulation
*Carina Remmers
remmers.carina@gmail.com
1
Clinical Psychology, University of Hildesheim, Universitätsplatz 1,
31141 Hildesheim, Germany
2
Vivantes Wenckebach Clinic, Clinic for Psychiatry, Psychotherapy
and Psychosomatics, Wenckebachstraße 23, Berlin, Germany
3
Social Cognition Center Cologne, University of Cologne,
Richard-Strauss-Str. 2, 50931 Köln, Germany
4
Clinical Psychology, VU University Amsterdam, Van der
Boechorststraat 1, 1081 BT Amsterdam, Netherlands
Mindfulness (2016) 7:829–837
DOI 10.1007/s12671-016-0520-1
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